A Bench of Independent Minds, ‘Supremes’ Go Their Own Way

If there’s any one line that the legal community here has been echoing these last few weeks about the Florida Supreme Court, it’s that the “Supremes” are independent, unabashed and completely unpredictable.

Friday’s decision couldn’t have been a better told-you-so. Not only did the seven justices hand down a stunning verdict reversing a lower court and ordering the resumption of the torturous hand counting of ballots. But the court split 4-3, with a usually liberal justice voting against Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore and moderates pushing strongly for him.

“This is not a court where there are ever patterns on how decisions are made,” said Herman Russomanno, president of the Florida Bar Assn. “They’re truly independent, and if you don’t see that by Friday’s action, you never will.”

Take Justice Leander J. Shaw Jr., a 70-year-old Army veteran who’s been on the court 17 years. A former law school professor, Shaw is considered one of the court’s most progressive jurists.

He was so outraged by Florida’s bungled execution system--in one instance, an inmate’s head caught fire in the electric chair--that he took the controversial step of publishing gruesome death chamber pictures on the Internet to show his disgust. But on Friday, he joined the dissent against doing more hand counts.

“How can you spin that?” asked Steve Uhlfelder, a Tallahassee lawyer. “That guy’s supposed to be the most liberal.”

‘This Is a Court of Moderates’

Former Florida Chief Justice Gerald Kogan said the same thing. “Shaw part of the dissent? That was definitely a surprise.”

There may have been no pattern to the split, but legal experts shared a few observations. The three youngest members of the high court all voted to reverse the lower court. And the members of the dissent were precisely those three justices on the court the longest.

All the judges on the court are Democrats except for Justice Major B. Harding, an independent, who was part of the fractious dissent. “I’m sure there must have been some strong arguing in there in the battle for swing votes,” Uhlfelder said.

Kogan agreed that most of the justices usually are philosophically compatible.

“This is a court of moderates,” he said. “There’s no wild-eyed liberals or reactionaries up there.” Uhlfelder and others said Justice Barbara J. Pariente was probably the ringleader of the majority, the one pushing to reverse the lower court decision and order hand counts.

Pariente, 51, is gregarious and self-assured, the justice who most people will remember as the one firing off question after question during the hearings in a choppy New York accent.

She’s also from Palm Beach County, official birthplace of the recount movement, and is close friends with Lois Frankel, the Democratic House minority leader in the Florida Legislature, who has been pressing to count every vote. Frankel is from Palm Beach County too.

Frankel’s Republican adversaries, who control the Legislature, were none too pleased with Friday’s decision. Many lawmakers have openly criticized the Florida high court, and after the decision, Tom Feeney, the Florida House speaker, issued a statement saying he was “terribly saddened.”

Feeney has led the charge for a special session of the Florida Legislature to directly appoint delegates loyal to the Republican candidate, Texas Gov. George W. Bush--regardless of the outcome of the pending court battles.

The two branches of Florida government--Legislature and Supreme Court--have been at war for some time. Republican lawmakers have watched helplessly as the high court struck down criminal sentencing guidelines and parental notification in cases of teens seeking abortions. This summer, the court rejected a series of proposed constitutional amendments that would have prohibited affirmative action in public education.

In April, justices tossed out a plan to speed up executions, saying it was unquestionably unconstitutional. Republicans were so outraged that they tried to increase the number of justices from seven to nine, in an attempt to give the Republican governor two appointees and an opportunity to influence the court’s direction.

Those proposals died a not-so-quiet death and did seem to have an effect on Charles T. Wells, who promised smooth relations with the other branches of government when he became chief justice in June.

Biting Opinion From Chief Justice

Wells wrote a stinging minority opinion Friday. He was “the perfect trial lawyer,” in one man’s words, an affable Florida native who was close with Lawton Chiles, the late former governor known for his liberal streak.

He couldn’t have found stronger, graver words to criticize the work of his colleagues. “I have a deep and abiding concern that the prolonging of the judicial process in this counting contest propels this country and this state into an unprecedented and unnecessary constitutional crisis . . . that will do substantial damage to our country, our state and to this court as an institution,” the 61-year-old jurist said.

There’s also another factor in the Supreme Court’s decision: N. Sanders Sauls. He is the Leon County circuit judge who roundly rejected the case for recounts earlier this week.

On Friday, the Supremes so roundly rejected his reasoning in sending the case back to him that he immediately recused himself.

This is not the first time the Supreme Court has had Sauls in its cross hairs. Two years ago, the folksy, no-nonsense conservative Sauls clashed with the Florida Supreme Court over the administrative appointment at the Leon County court of a friend of one of his hunting buddies.

The high court criticized Sauls for his handling of the matter, with Justice Harding lambasting the judge for “continuing disruption in the administration of justice.” After the flap, Sauls resigned as chief judge of the 2nd Judicial Circuit, although he stayed on as a trial judge.

With so many variables as the legal battle over the election continues, lawyers here say don’t bother trying to look for clear answers.

“It comes down to this: Anybody who tries to make this a simple story is making a big mistake,” Uhlfelder said.

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Times researcher Robin Mayper contributed to this story.